Does a Universal Basic Income Bring Long-Term Changes? (nytimes.com) 152
For more than a year, The New York Times followed recipients of a universal basic income program who received $1,330 a month for an entire year.
There were benefits, but also the everyday challenges of being poor, and turning their life around "did not turn out to be quite that simple." Across Silicon Valley, experimental guaranteed income programs have quietly taken off. Google began funding six different initiatives in 2022 as part of a $50 million donation to nonprofits in the San Francisco Bay Area, saying basic income could be a novel way to prevent homelessness in one of the nation's most expensive locations. Each program has hundreds of participants who receive around $1,000 a month, and academics study the results. State and federal tax laws limit the lengths of the programs and the payment amounts.
The studies have found that most basic income programs improve short-term employment and mental health while reducing food insecurity. But while data from these efforts has been closely tracked, less is known about the individual journeys of participants... The Times ultimately shadowed three people... All of the program participants, including the ones The Times followed, were previously homeless and transitioning off a housing stipend that paid for a portion of their rent, and many received the payments on top of other social assistance like food stamps.
The Times's findings mirrored the academic studies. For all three recipients, the instant benefits of basic income were clear: They had breathing room for groceries, rent and other expenses. But the success of the payments in another area — giving people more free time and opportunity in the long term — was mixed. "It's a lot to ask of someone to get their life together in 12 months, when a lot of these issues are structural or systemic," said Jennifer Loving, who runs Destination: Home, a nonprofit that administers basic income programs in Silicon Valley. "And the world around them isn't getting cheaper."
One recipient began going to community college — but resorted to taking one class at a time while single parenting — and using their monthly payments to help support relatives. In fact, the article notes that a recent study of 3,000 universal basic income participants found that money spent supporting friends and family increased 26%, "the most of any category. That was more than the increases for food (6%) and child care (11%)."
Another recipient used the time to get help at a community college to find a higher-paying job. And one recipient died — but his mother used what he'd saved to help put his brother through a drug rehab program.
There were benefits, but also the everyday challenges of being poor, and turning their life around "did not turn out to be quite that simple." Across Silicon Valley, experimental guaranteed income programs have quietly taken off. Google began funding six different initiatives in 2022 as part of a $50 million donation to nonprofits in the San Francisco Bay Area, saying basic income could be a novel way to prevent homelessness in one of the nation's most expensive locations. Each program has hundreds of participants who receive around $1,000 a month, and academics study the results. State and federal tax laws limit the lengths of the programs and the payment amounts.
The studies have found that most basic income programs improve short-term employment and mental health while reducing food insecurity. But while data from these efforts has been closely tracked, less is known about the individual journeys of participants... The Times ultimately shadowed three people... All of the program participants, including the ones The Times followed, were previously homeless and transitioning off a housing stipend that paid for a portion of their rent, and many received the payments on top of other social assistance like food stamps.
The Times's findings mirrored the academic studies. For all three recipients, the instant benefits of basic income were clear: They had breathing room for groceries, rent and other expenses. But the success of the payments in another area — giving people more free time and opportunity in the long term — was mixed. "It's a lot to ask of someone to get their life together in 12 months, when a lot of these issues are structural or systemic," said Jennifer Loving, who runs Destination: Home, a nonprofit that administers basic income programs in Silicon Valley. "And the world around them isn't getting cheaper."
One recipient began going to community college — but resorted to taking one class at a time while single parenting — and using their monthly payments to help support relatives. In fact, the article notes that a recent study of 3,000 universal basic income participants found that money spent supporting friends and family increased 26%, "the most of any category. That was more than the increases for food (6%) and child care (11%)."
Another recipient used the time to get help at a community college to find a higher-paying job. And one recipient died — but his mother used what he'd saved to help put his brother through a drug rehab program.
Wait a second (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact, the article notes that a recent study of 3,000 universal basic income participants found that money spent supporting friends and family increased 26%, "the most of any category ...."
Didn't these people need the money to support themselves [youtu.be] in the first place?
Re:Wait a second (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the major reasons people get into the various forms of poor trap is that they have a network of people they love and help but are worse off than them.
The single parent keeping their teen age kid alive.
Who also makes sure her mother gets her medication
Who also has a brother/sister in rehab.
The people that have a good support network (middle class parents that occasionally buy them diapers) are the ones that have the time and energy to get a good job.
I hope UBI comes to pass... (Score:1)
...so I can raise rents and make bank.
Re: I hope UBI comes to pass... (Score:2)
You might be AC, but your tenants know your name and address.
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Because he's one of a thousand public corporations? And you probably work for one of them?
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I'll just leave this [youtube.com] here.
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The Dead Kennedys wrote a song about you...
Stop the electioneering at the NYT (Score:1)
The flood of pretend new stories which are electioneering editorials just before the election needs to stop.
How many of these campaign issues and their talking points repackaged as 'news' do we need?
Just cover the news and not just pile on 'news' article after article from one side of the political spectrum.
The NYT should be better than this and not give a platform for campaigning otherwise readers will incorrectly think that only certain demographic groups have issues needing government help and the rest o
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Arguably the most important point. The effects of UBI are not seen in a study with a few people, they are seen when UBI is "universal", thus the name. It's really embarrassing, why do people think Silicon Valley is special? It gave us Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk?
UBI is a bad idea, not because it's not needed but because we already have it collectively in what is called welfare. We need reform and streamlining, you cannot give a bucket of money to everyone and accomplishing anything other tha
Re: Wait a second (Score:2)
Re: Wait a second (Score:2)
Re: Wait a second (Score:2)
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I think the idea is that it is a safety net. If you have a job you pay into it and it mostly cancels out (probably though pay more in than get out, so it's a tax to you). If you lose your nice job, the payments continue and your payments back in get cut off. Giving you an income again - immediately - instead of applying for aid and jumping through hoops while the bills pile up. In that way, it is superior to what we have in the US today. In most other ways I think it's generally infeasible, but that's
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But it's one thing that helps keep Australia's crime rate down, because it reduces the relative poverty rate.
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Re:Wait a second (Score:5, Interesting)
What this allocation seems to suggest is that study participants who receive UBI feel compelled to distribute some of that income to their loved ones, because they too need assistance, and doing so improves their social circle's quality of life in ways that are not so material as buying goods and services. Therefore, if UBI were made available to everyone in need--and not just to study participants--then such redistribution would not occur at this rate.
What I've noticed with these studies is that critics of UBI and other forms of social safety net programs frequently come from entitled backgrounds. They have never known poverty and have formed this narrative of poor people "wasting" the money they earn or receive as the reason for their poverty. They can't understand why poor people don't just "find a better job," or "stop eating so much food," or "find a cheaper place to live." They look at the world through their own lens of plenty, and don't see how society severely penalizes the poor for simply being poor and extracts from them additional financial costs that the more fortunate do not have to pay.
In the same vein, there is this insidious undercurrent of elitism in the criticism that UBI recipients need to have their spending monitored and judged before they are entitled to it, because it reinforces this false narrative that poor people are poor because they don't use their money "wisely." Meanwhile, we have a billionaire class that truly wastes their obscene wealth on luxury yachts and monuments to their greatness. If anything, it is the poor--who have lived the experience of scarcity and have to decide every day what is truly meaningful in life--who should be entrusted to wealth, because every day they feel the tremendous pressure, anxiety, and insecurity of not having it, and therefore know how important it is to make sure that others do not suffer the same.
So when they give money to their friends or family when they barely have enough for themselves, you KNOW they aren't doing it frivolously. Unlike billionaires, who only love themselves, they know how important it is to share with the people you love.
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What this allocation seems to suggest is that study participants who receive UBI feel compelled to distribute some of that income to their loved ones, because they too need assistance, and doing so improves their social circle's quality of life.........So when they give money to their friends or family when they barely have enough for themselves, you KNOW they aren't doing it frivolously.
Well said.
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There's also something that could be called a "poverty tax".
People who have very little generally end up paying more for it than someone else.
For example, if you need toilet paper you might be able to scrape up enough money to buy a package of two rolls for $4.99. Even if the package of sixteen rolls is on sale for $9.99, you don't have $9.99 and therefore can't buy it.
Also, consider what happens if you are in a position where you have nowhere to store food and prepare it. You have to buy pre-made food in
Re:Wait a second (Score:5, Interesting)
Precisely. I alluded to this in my previous comment, but you give very simple and specific examples of this phenomenon.
Other examples with significant impact:
Ability to borrow money is almost nonexistent for the poor, except for usurious rates such as in payday loans or credit card interest. An absolutely astonishing percentage of Americans carry a balance on their credit cards from month to month, and pay interest on that balance. And the poorest Americans can't even access credit. This inability to borrow at a favorable rate impacts major purchases that would, in the long run, save enormous sums of money, such as financing a home or an automobile. A home builds equity and doesn't enrich a landlord. A car lets you commute to better jobs and saves time otherwise wasted on public transit.
Fines, fees, and consumption taxes as a proportion of income are vastly higher, and there is no legal recourse. Late on your credit card payment because your employer didn't pay you on time? The bank doesn't care and you don't have money to sue your employer, not to mention they might just fire you. Sales tax is extremely regressive; 8-10% makes no difference to the well off, but regularly stops the poor from being able to afford basic necessities--and many state/local governments continue to seek increases in sales tax in order to make up for budget shortfalls as a result of their own lack of fiscal discipline.
What bothers me is how the wealthy class is always quick to point out how much "assistance" is given to the poor, but when it comes to the poverty tax and actually having an equitable playing field in economic affairs, they are dead silent. And the middle class eats up this narrative, because they don't want to believe that they have more in common with the poor than they do with the rich. Most Americans are one health emergency away from bankruptcy. Most cannot afford to lose their job. Yet so many believe that they should direct their anger at the poor for "being lazy and taking the benefits their taxes pay for," when the truth is that the truly wealthy have rigged the financial and political system to pay almost no taxes and steal far more tax dollars than all of the poor are ever given.
It is a kind of mass delusion perpetrated by the rich in order to sustain their wholesale theft of the wealth created by the entire working class, and the fact that so few of us have woken up to this reality is what makes me want to scream.
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Of course the wealthy don't want to talk about getting millions in tax breaks (to create jobs) and then creating so few jobs it would have been cheaper to just collect the taxes and pay those few people directly.
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"Poor people make poor choices". Congrats, you qualify for DEI - dumb, entitled, and ignorant. Also bigoted. You know *nothing* about poor people. Or their choices. You paint them with a Faux Noise brush.
I'd like to see *you* live on $1330/mo. Welfare, and SSI, btw, are *less*. What's the rent near you? Think you could afford a car on that?
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Here, you've essentially reconstructed Sam Vimes' (read: Sir Terry Pratchett's) Boots Theory of Socio-Economic Unfairness, in which a well-off man buys a solid pair of boots (priced accordingly) that keep his feet comfortable and dry for ages, while the poor man goes through multiple pairs of cheaper shoes that fail at keeping the cold and wet out...and still cost, in aggregate, more than the single pair of quality boots.
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Re:Wait a second (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, they did need the money for themselves. But one thing you seem to not understand about poor people is that they are much more likely to actually help people they see and know that are doing worse than them. The rich like to talk a lot about charity and giving, but they generally give less as a percentage of their income and wealth than poor people. Because these people know what it is like to be broke, they are more willing to give even the little extra they have to someone who needs it more than they do.
Re: Wait a second (Score:4)
This place is such a shithole these days. Parent should not be marked troll.
Re: Wait a second (Score:4)
This place is such a shithole these days. Parent should not be marked troll.
Comments critical of the established economic order have been ruthlessly downmodded on Slashdot for literally the entire time I've been here, at least. I've been observing that those comments are aggressively targeted for my entire posting career. Anything that asserts or even implies that nerds might on average be part of a privileged class is shat upon with a quickness, presumably so that certain people can avoid ever engaging in any introspection whatsoever.
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Re: Wait a second (Score:2)
UBI is worthless by itself (Score:1, Interesting)
The plan is to eliminate all government services that you use or depend on and replace them with a single check.
No social security no Medicare new universal Health Care if you're not American no food assistance no housing assistance no education no nothing. You get a check and that's it.
Then they suck that check right out of you using their monopolies and we're righ
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It's always about going back to feudalism.
It would be closer to sharecropping, and with agricultural robots that honestly sounds like one of the more optimistic dystopias.
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I'll be relaxing on my automated fief, enjoying lovely farm-to-table meals. I don't mind kicking a basket of produce up to the "Epstein Class" because I have everything I need.
It sure beats the hell out of Skynet (although blue pill The Matrix might be a step up, I'd have to think about it).
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Your fiefdom exists because it's feudalism, not sharecropping.
But sure, just so long as you are shitting on others you can tolerate a little shitting on you. Can't wait for your reaction to the brown eye, though. Selfishness and accepting your place are not really compatible, capitalism is built on that incompatibility.
Agricultural robots would ensure that there will be no sharecropping, your "optimistic dystopia" is a genocide.
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I'll be relaxing on my automated fief
You'll be providing phosphorus whilst you rot. They won't need you. Your billionaire worship won't save you: They don't need you, so they will never appreciate you. They think you're the dumbest dogshit on the street, especially for supporting them, double especially because you have concocted this fantasy for yourself on their behalf. You epitomize internalized abuse.
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Eliminating government services is already being done without replacing them with a check, and it was being done well before UBI discussion became common.
More importantly, the same ones advocating for UBI aren't the same ones that are going to unleash DOGE onto the various government departments. They instead take the path of taxing the ultra-rich.
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I don't know of anyone who thinks the UBI would replace universal healthcare or free education. Google also came up empty.
So please, name and shame!
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I don't know of anyone who thinks the UBI would replace universal healthcare or free education.
In the USA it almost certainly would. Remember, even our glorious alleged liberal Obama's health care plan literally wrote health insurance company profits into the law. (Meanwhile he got a Nobel peace prize for drone strikes on noncombatants without judicial process, including killing one American citizen, though that really shouldn't be the bar.)
In elementary school they taught me that Columbus discovered America, and that I should pledge allegiance under god, so our free education is equally indoctrinati
Re:UBI is worthless by itself (Score:4, Insightful)
A man wrote me and said: ``You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.”
I would gladly send my tax dollars to help the Somalian who came here to work and start a family than to help your America hating fat fucking ass.
Can I quote what Copilot said? (Score:5, Insightful)
The most revealing sentence in these UBI discussions is often the one that assumes observers get to decide what recipients ought to do with their lives.
Why should the success metric be "became more employable" or "increased earnings"?
A genuinely universal income would buy something more basic than that: the ability to say no. No to a job, no to a lifestyle, no to social expectations, no to optimizing one's entire existence around economic performance.
If people use that freedom in ways that researchers, employers, or policymakers would not choose for them, that seems like evidence that they are exercising the freedom, not evidence that the program failed.
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Because the goal is not to be on the public tit forever?
Here's the blunt truth:
- we can't all be rich
- life is hard fucking work for most people
- sometimes people make bad choices
- sometimes there isn't a "do over" option
- the ostensible goal of a considerate society is to safety-net people through hard times *to get them back on their feet*, not to make it so some lazy people don't ever have to work because they don't want to. This is why Democrats want all public assistance to channel through big facele
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Copilot:
You're worried about a few welfare recipients making bad choices with public money.
Fair enough. But where is the comparable outrage over the trillions spent on wars, corporate welfare, bailouts, procurement boondoggles, and failed government projects?
Suppose a small fraction of basic-income recipients waste some of the money. That's not ideal. But compare the social cost of a few people buying things you disapprove of with the social cost of destroying infrastructure, conducting wars, or transferrin
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Who says I'm NOT outraged by that? Why the simplistic binary?
Personally, I believe that anyone getting a dime of government $ should be banned from voting / donating politically due to conflict of interest.
This includes the welfare poor BUT ALSO the management (c-suites, I'd guess) of ANY company with
- federal contracts
- using public resources (ie oil companies on federal lands)
- in-law tax benefits.
I also believe corporations should have escalating tax rates for owned dwellings; that is, like people they
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Um, no. The premise of UBI is it is for everyone equally throughout life. It doesn't judge nor punish. You're allowed to be a useless slob. It wouldn't be UBI otherwise.
Re: Can I quote what Copilot said? (Score:2)
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Nope. Maybe an argument could be made to do it that way if it were somehow manageable but it certainly isn't the premise of UBI per se.
Re: Can I quote what Copilot said? (Score:2)
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Inflationary pressure just isn't discussed. That's not the concern of these experiments. But yes, any serious consideration given to UBI at a government level would be very concerned with inflation.
Re: Can I quote what Copilot said? (Score:2)
Re: Can I quote what Copilot said? (Score:2)
Re: why you still so ignorant? (Score:2)
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It's because the detractors first complaint is one of "The recipients will just become a bunch of bludgers and contribute nothing back to society."
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Because there are two kinds of freedom, positive and negative. Negative freedom is freedom from interference. The government can't arbitrarily detain you, can't regulate what you do with your body, can't censor your speech, that kind of thing. Very strong in the US.
Positive freedom is almost non-existent there though, while it is common in Europe. The right to an education so that you can have a fair opportunity to prosper, for example. The right to healthcare. Employment and consumer rights that address th
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What you describe is the European model. UBI to stop you being exploited by the need to earn a minimum amount or face poverty. It will never fly in the US
There's little evidence it will ever fly in Europe, either.
The biggest problem with UBI experiments (Score:2)
Is that they are too short. It takes a long time to change your life, especially if you've been severely disadvantaged for a very long time, and because they know the program has a definite end-date, participants are much less likely to commit to long-term strategies for permanent change. Just put yourself in their shoes, if you can. Imagine having no fixed abode and being hungry all the time, and when you seek a brief respite from unrelenting misery and shame by indulging in recreational substances you are
UBI is a joke (Score:4, Informative)
So, let me know how you do a UBI study when the economic zone includes people not getting UBI.
Seriously, it's supplemental income for some people, but it's not UBI.
Not good science. Textbook cherrypicking (Score:5, Insightful)
For every one of these stories, there are several more of people taking their government benefits and spending them on frivolous or even harmful things.
Food stamps for junk food, candy, and soda is the classic example. That one is neat because you can actually quantify how many people do it.
The point of science is to provide good information by which sound decisions can be informed.
Looking *only* at people who are vetted to receive a certain benefit does not adequately measure the effect of this benefit. Looking only at people who are vetted to receive a benefit (and there *is* vetting and self-selection for these programs) does not adequately capture possible side-effects of scaling this benefit more widely. To include not only struggling single mothers but also the deadbeat dads who left them and the drug addicts killing themselves with xylazine on Kensington Ave in Philly.
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For every one of these stories, there are several more of people taking their government benefits and spending them on frivolous or even harmful things.
My ex-boss got an $83,000 PPP "loan" and bought a travel trailer with it.
Socialism fails (Score:1)
Call it UBI, it still fails like the Soviet Union.
Call it "National Socialism," it still fails like the Soviet Union.
And the welfare state in the US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany?
Failing like the Soviet Union.
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What nation(s) do you think are currently doing it right by your opinion?
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My money is on the USSA!!
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"Call it UBI, it still fails like the Soviet Union."
No it doesn't. It's still fails...but nothing like the Soviet Union. Thanks for telling everyone you're ignorant though, not that we can't tell from the name.
Stick to raging on trans people, more traction. Your friend Putin thinks the Soviet Union is ideal.
Never underestimate the apathy of the human psyche (Score:1)
Give people money so they don't have to work... They wont. Sure some might find it helpful as a stepping stone out of poverty, but the vast majority will continue in their stuck existence. If the idea is to help people out of poverty UBI seems like a very poor choice. Let's not forget that throwing money into an economy tends to cause inflation. What is stopping the cost of your rent going up the exact amount of your UBI? That car payment? Sure you can make laws to prevent that kind of predatory behav
Re: Never underestimate the apathy of the human ps (Score:2)
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Give people money so they don't have to work... They wont.
This is, of course, complete bullshit born of ignorance. I note it doesn't stop you sharing your shit sandwich with the class. Nobody wants it, thanks.
Sure some might find it helpful as a stepping stone out of poverty, but the vast majority will continue in their stuck existence.
The only reason they're "stuck" is because of a system designed to require a percentage of people to be stuck. Basic income programs try to remedy that.
What is stopping the cost of your rent going up the exact amount of your UBI?
Nothing as long as we have to deal with obstructionist dickwads who vote down every attempt to improve anything. Don't be one.
not an UBI program (Score:2)
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You could if you signed over your checks to Elon Musk, lived in the shelters he provided and did what you're told. That's what the move to Texas is for.
"So people were given a donation, and mostly boring things happened."
Yes, because everything interesting about UBI is not tested, only a few games to create a narrative was. Trial runs and UBI are not compatible.
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$1.2K a month isn't an income a person could survive on, that might be half or less of an UBI.
The average SSI/SSP recipient is living on $1233.94/mo.
So people were given a donation, and mostly boring things happened.
Yeah, mostly a bunch of people who know fuck-all wrote a bunch of ignorant comments about something they know less than dick about. Thanks for your worthless contribution.
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Nowhere close yet (Score:2)
UBI will probably be a thing by necessity at some point but at least here in America we have so much to repair and actually build of all that institutional scaffolding to hold up something like UBI which is something you can do once you already have a well functioning welfare state. It can't replace a universal medical system for example.
Also as an American I think the so called Protestant-work-ethic really is so ingrained into American culture that UBI would fail. I've always believed a Federal Jobs Guar
non-impoverished? (Score:2)
Middle income are "poor but we don't know it. We live by budgets but don't have enough to plan far ahead". This accounts for much of the US population. For them $1000 a month means feeding their child fresh vegetables rather than frozen
No they didn't, David (Score:2)
For more than a year, The New York Times followed recipients of a universal basic income program
It would help if the Slashdolt editors knew what words meant at all. It's not universal if everyone doesn't get it. Just because the Nazi-boosting NYT used the word in their article, that doesn't mean that Nazi-protecting Slashdot has to use the same word in the summary.
This isn't UBI, it's CBI (Score:5, Insightful)
Universal Basic Income is a concept where everyone in a society receives a set dollar amount for unrestricted spending, regardless of other income... that's the "Universal" part.
What is described here is Charitable/Corporate Basic Income, where people in need apply for assistance, are approved or denied, and the recipient list is very limited or restricted to predetermined hardship conditions.
This is a rebranding of welfare (taxpayer-sourced assistance) to corporate-sourced philanthropy (in this case google), which is a positive thing, but it is not UBI.
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This is a rebranding of welfare (taxpayer-sourced assistance) to corporate-sourced philanthropy (in this case google), which is a positive thing
In what way is it a positive thing to make more people more reliant on corporations?
Rigged bullshit (Score:2)
Re:You can't pay people to not be awful (Score:5, Insightful)
It's interesting that you think these people are awful just because they're poor. 26% of these people used the money to help friends and family. That's way higher than what people with way more money would likely do.
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It's interesting that you think these people are awful just because they're poor.
Are they awful because they're poor, or are they poor because they're awful? Some people are born in poverty and never have a chance to escape. Others end up there because they make bad choice after bad choice, knowing they're making bad choices.
26% of these people used the money to help friends and family.
That could be buying an ageing parent life saving medication. That could also include buying an addict brother his next meth hit so he won't steal your car again.
Does the study even attempt to distinguish between them?
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It sounds like a lot of them are poor because they share what they have too much.
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Re:You can't pay people to not be awful (Score:4, Insightful)
It's interesting that you think these people are awful just because they're poor.
Are they awful because they're poor, or are they poor because they're awful? Some people are born in poverty and never have a chance to escape. Others end up there because they make bad choice after bad choice, knowing they're making bad choices.
26% of these people used the money to help friends and family.
That could be buying an ageing parent life saving medication. That could also include buying an addict brother his next meth hit so he won't steal your car again.
Does the study even attempt to distinguish between them?
It never ceases to amaze me how many leaps of logic people are willing to make in order to condemn folks they've never met, yet no leaps of logic are acceptable on any level in order to support those same folks. If we had a true UBI, they wouldn't have to throw their UBI money at others to help them survive, whether you want to attribute that survival to buying someone's next meth hit or not. That's the part of this study that failed to me. If we find out the UBI payment is mostly going to family members, maybe the family members should be included in the UBI experiment and see if that doesn't slow the bleeding from the original UBI participants.
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It's interesting that you think these people are awful just because they're poor. 26% of these people used the money to help friends and family. That's way higher than what people with way more money would likely do.
That's a good point.
A common criticism to any sort of benefit scheme it that the recipients are not deserving. But of course we often decide to expend additional resources on people who might not be deserving - If our child goes off the rails, we will do what we can to get their life back on track. We can justify this, saying the child is one of our own, while the homeless stranger living a mile away under a bridge is not. This defense may be common sense to most, but in using it, we start to sound a bit li
Re:You can't pay people to not be awful (Score:5, Informative)
You're entitled to your anecdotes / insights but the collected data belies them.
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"I've worked around and with poor people, and they're awful far more often than working class/professional class types..."
Please show us the data. Funny how you assume a different standard for yourself.
Re:You can't pay people to not be awful (Score:4, Insightful)
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I've worked around and with poor people, and they're awful far more often than working class/professional class types, and they're even awful far more often than the rich are.
Your bias is typical and boring. The rich are stealing from all of us all of the time with their tax avoidance, and they own the businesses that steal wages, and wage theft exceeds all other theft combined.
So yeah, awful people.
You'd suck an awful person's dick for free. We can see that because you're doing it right here in front of all of us.
Re:You can't pay people to not be awful (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
"why does everyone call us fascists bro?!?!"
Re: (Score:3)
Yep, just look at all the rich people caught committing fraud: D Trump, K Paxton, E Holmes, S Bankman-Fried, General Dynamics, the entire health insurance industry. You would think US people would realize that rich people are not better than them.
Re: (Score:3)
You can tie UBI into incentives for certain behaviors
But then it wouldn't be a UBI anymore.
Re:more is less (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the real reasons Nixon Republicans didn't like it: More stable income would mean it would be easier for you to quit your job if you wanted to.
Re:more is less (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the real reasons Nixon Republicans didn't like it: More stable income would mean it would be easier for you to quit your job if you wanted to.
I think that thought has been behind (some) objections to the ACA and/or proposed universal health care programs, like Medicare for all.
Re: (Score:1)
Sorry, Trump says no [slashdot.org].
Re: (Score:1)
Humphrey Democrats thought such a guaranteed income would fundamentally change America
Who disagrees?
Re:You need incentives to do better (Score:4, Interesting)
You can't just give people money or things and expect improvements or happiness.
You literally can.
You need to help them back on their feet
You mean like giving them money so they can exist in our society which requires you to have money if you don't want to be treated like vermin?
and give them an incentive to do constructive things that will help their self esteem
You mean like not giving them enough money to go on holiday?
Another thing that helps is giving some people purpose though work. Some people can't work.
Alone, those sentences are worthless. Together, they are confusing. Make up your mind.
Re: You need incentives to do better (Score:2)
You mean how the natives fed the puritans they should have pushed into the ocean?
Re: (Score:2)
So....no answer, confirmed.
I have read about UBI, extensively, because its advocates never tire of begging for other people's money.
Re: (Score:2)
At least for the people who live long enough. That was my reaction to the story, but there is no mention of retired people in the large discussion, but I have a pension now and spend all of my time reading, walking, and visiting libraries to find new stuff to read.
However going for funny, I do have a related (for extremely tangential values of "related") thought of the day:
Youth = Average of changes is better.
Maturity = Changes average out to zero.
Old age = Average of changes is worse.
So have a good day until you die and get off the ride.
I feel like I must have gotten that from someone somewhere, but I cant recall the source. Did I read it or hear something? Does it ring any bells in your head? Maybe a philosopher sometime in some book?
It appears I have to quote it against the censor sock puppets with mod points, but I mostly wonder what part of it annoyed them so much. The philosophic flavor? Or is Social Security some kind of third rail, even in the indirect reference via "pension"? Can't really claim I was disappointed because I no longer expect any helpful references or even thoughtful replies from Slashdot... (There are individual exceptions, but in general the tl;dr appears to be mostly automatic after a paragraph or two.)
My memory